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Famous Newark statue is flat on its back and not seen for years

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A detail part of the sculpture is braced with wood and has an old tarp on top if it. Gutzon Borglum, an American artist and sculptor famous for creating the monumental presidents' heads at Mount Rushmore, has sculpted four well known pieces in Newark. Three of them are still standing. The fourth one was taken down several years ago when the Newark light rail and was constructed and it was never put back. It's laying on its back like junk next to inoperable traffic lights on the grounds of Newark's traffic and signals division.
(Aristide Economopoulos/The Star-Ledger))

The statue lays flat on its back between a dumpster and a pile of tangled, inoperable traffic lights. A tattered blue tarp that flaps in the wind on a breezy day covers the front, but the chunky marble base is detached and laying on a worn wooden pallet immersed in water.

Few who pass by would know that the statue, which commemorates Newark’s 250th anniversary, was created by noted American artist and sculptor Gutzon Borglum, who is best known for his work at Mount Rushmore.

It’s called “First Landing Party of the Founders of Newark” and it looks like a piece of junk on a city-owned lot at the Division of Traffic and Signals. As far as anyone can tell, it’s been there at least 10 years, maybe longer, and no one can explain how or why it was discarded.

“The fact that this statue is off the mind and out of the public sphere for so long might speak to a form of civic amnesia when you forget what the city used to look like and you forget the artistic assets that the city used to have,” said Clement Price, professor of history at Rutgers University, Newark.

“Among the indices of Newark’s decline and slow recovery is the fate of its public art, much of which was created and dedicated and brought to light during Newark’s golden era, the first 30 years of the last century.”

That’s a precarious — and also curious — position for a tribute to Newark’s founders.

“First Landing” is one of four Borglum statues in the city. It’s listed on both state and national historical registers just like the other three, which can be easily found. “Wars of America” sits high in Military Park, the “Indian and the Puritan” is at the tip of Washington Park by the Newark Public Library and the “Seated Lincoln” is in front of the Essex County Court House.

Borglum, born in Idaho two years after President Lincoln’s death, started out as a painter. He honed his craft for sculpture when he returned to the United States after living abroad for 11 years.

He worked on a grand scale, creating monumental public works that reflected an expansive and expanding nation. Two of Borglum’s Newark statues were commissioned by a wealthy businessman and the other two by the city.

The forgotten, discarded statue is 9 feet tall. It’s decorated in bas relief, a technique in which design elements and figures are barely prominent. Across the top of this marble fountain monument, a series of images represents the founders. In the middle, two Puritans overlook a well or spring. On the backside of the slab are the names of the city’s founders.

How it wound up at the Traffic and Signals Division is a mystery to Newark’s preservation community, and the city’s new administration doesn’t have an answer either.

Liz Del Tufo, president of the Newark Preservation and Landmarks Committee, said she was relieved to learn that the statue was on city property, because she didn’t know where it had gone after it was moved out of Lombardy Park near McCarter Highway. Still, she said she was disheartened when she went to take a look at it recently along with Richard Grossklaus, a member of the Newark Landmark and Historic Preservation Commission.

“What a shame that’s where the statue is and how it ended up,” she said.

Unveiled in 1916, the work was erected in Landing Place Park at the foot of Saybrook Place near McCarter Highway. It remained there until the mid 1990s when the New Jersey Performing Arts Center was built. At some point before or after NJPAC opened in 1997, the statue was moved two blocks away to Lombardy Park. No one is sure why it was placed there, but motorists say they can remember driving by the figure.

John Abeigon said he didn’t know the statue’s value until he noticed it was gone while on his way to work at the Newark Teachers Union, where he is director of organization.

He said a documentary on Borglum stoked his interest, so he tried to find out what happened to the piece.

It looks like the statue was taken down for a second time when New Jersey Transit started construction on it’s light rail system in 2002.

Sakina Cole, the city’s director of communication, said it appears to have been moved by a construction crew out of necessity. It was then delivered, she said, to the city’s Department of Engineering’s Traffic and Signals Division by crane. As time passed, the weight of the statue on the wooden pallet most likely caused it to topple over and separate from its base.

When Abeigon tracked it down last winter, he said he couldn’t believe this city treasure was just lying there, off the city map.

He said he called around City Hall but couldn’t didn’t get any answers.

He was not the only person with questions about the statue.

The previous administration and council members were made aware of the statue’s plight via a hand delivered letter in January by Guy Sterling, a Newark resident and activist. Nothing happened.

“Maybe this will light a fire up under us to install the statue in a place of prominence for people that don’t know Newark as having a rich history,” said Council President Mildred Crump.

As much as this is a question about what happens to public art when a city redevelops, Del Tufo and others said many of Newark’s 28 monuments are in bad shape and not well maintained.

“We walk past them (the monuments) and don’t realize the significance of who they represent and the importance they play to the city of Newark,” said Kathleen Galop, a fellow at the Rutgers Institute on Ethnicity, Culture and the Modern Experience.

“Shouldn’t it be in a better place than in the back yard of traffic and signals?”

In less than two years, Newark will celebrate its 350th anniversary.

Rededicating the statue in time for that anniversary is a good idea, but Del Tufo said she doesn’t want to wait that long.

Once it’s restored, she said, this tribute to Newark’s history should be placed in Riverfront Park by the Passaic River, as a symbolic reminder of how the city founders came ashore.